We had Plans for this weekend.

We were going to motor down to OmegaGranny's en famille on Friday, spend the night, and then go down to the Valley of Death for the authentic Chinese New Year Festival.  We were all excited.  Lion dance!  Dim sum!  Meeting up with X.L., a volunteer that OmegaDad has worked with!  Fan dancing ladies!  A visit to Ranch 99 to stock up on intriguing noodles and frozen buns!

I had even been organized enough to call the petsitter.

So, first, we decided we didn't really need Nancy to petsit on Friday--we'd go home, pack, and head down the hill after work.  So, a call to Nancy to cancel Friday evening's visit.

Then, toward late Friday afternoon, OmegaDad calls me and announces in a croaky voice that he's feeling rotten and doesn't want to expose OmegaGranny to anything that might make her sick.

So, another call to Nancy to cancel the Saturday visit.

In the meantime, yours truly had, on Thursday night, a pea-sized hard swelling under the jaw.  I thought it might be from a tooth, though no tooth hurt.

By Friday afternoon, it was marble-sized, and painful.  If OmegaDad hadn't wussed out, I was ready to stay home myself.

But OmegaDotter really wanted to do CNY...So she and I drove down the hill to granny's house.

By this morning, the swelling was golf-ball sized.  And more painful.  Think "chipmunk chin".  I had had to dope myself with ibuprofen and aspirin in the middle of the night.  The thought of dealing with crowds and excited child and driving hither and yon for hundreds of miles while dealing with this ever-growing wen just didn't float my boat.

It was my turn to wuss out.  We drove back up the hill, I dumped the dotter with the dad (who was feeling much better), and headed over to the Doc-in-the-Box.

The end result:  something called sialadenitis, an infection of the salivary gland.  Think an infected pimple producing a great big honking huge painful sty--except bigger and more honking huge and more painful.  Apparently, you can get a blocked salivary gland outlet...and when that happens, all the leetle bacteria floating around your mouth just set up shop inside the gland, with all the backed up saliva, start doing the cha-cha-cha and breeding like bunnies.  The antibiotic I was on for the bronchitis doesn't touch this stuff, so now I'm on Augmentin.  Hot compresses, massaging the damned thing (OW!!), and lots of fluids.

The doc knew what it was right away--says she sees about three cases of it per year.

Nothing major compared to the rest of the world's ills, just a bloody pain and nuisance.  But at least I'm not dealing with the misery by shaving my head and getting a tattoo.  (That poor kid.  Seriously.  She needs a break.)

We have one last chance for a CNY-ish do, with the FCC gang her in Small Mountain University Town.  The way things have been going, it seems doomed already, but I still hold out hope...

Technorati: Sialadenitis